Zero Tolerance Policies...

Zero tolerance policies leave zero room for common sense. Hello, this is Tony Perkins with the Family Research Council in Washington. A Virginia second grader was suspended from school after the seven year-old was emulating his father. What does his father do, you ask? Well, he's a Marine. The boy said he was being a Marine, and the other boy was a bad guy. In the process of role playing, the now-suspended student pretended that a pencil was a gun. While reports indicate the boy was a good student and complied when he was told to lay down his pencil, a spokesperson for the Suffolk Public Schools, Bethany Bradshaw explained, "A pencil is a weapon, and it was used in a threatening way when gun noises are made." The boy's father, Paul Marshall said, "At some point, there needs to be, what used to be called common sense. Enough is enough. Where do you draw the line?" I'm not sure where you draw the line, but certainly you don't draw the line with a pencil. We should have zero tolerance for politically correct social engineering.